Artaud: The Screaming Body: Film, Drawings, Recordings 1924-1948

by Stephen Barber

Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) remains one of the most inspirational, provocative and challenging figures in world-wide contemporary culture. His trajectory extends from the Surrealist movement, to the Theatre of Cruelty, to the lunatic asylums of France, and finally back to Paris and the most astonishing period of his work. In this unique book, Stephen Barber explores the most violent extremes of Artaud's vision - work that is traversed by forces of ecstasy and annihilation, and sutured together by a raw imagery of the screaming human body. Based on extensive interviews with Artaud's closest friends and enemies, including the psychiatrist who gave him electro-shock treatment, ARTAUD: THE SCREAMING BODY gives a full and authoritative account of Artaud's film projects, and his conception of Surrealist cinema. It also examines his unique series of drawings of the fragmented human body, begun in the ward of a lunatic asylum and finished in a state of furious liberation. Finally, the book captures Artaud's ultimate experiment with the screaming body in the form of his censored recording "To Have Done With The Judgement Of God" -an experiment which is unprecedented in the history of art, and which ultimately decimates that history.

Genres: Philosophy

128 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 1999

Reviews

[Jasper · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful and thorough interpretation of Artaud greater dossier, a collection of works that are as profound as the are vile, valiant as they are depraved. I appreciate that it never forgoes Artaud’s drug addiction nor forgives the clinical mistreatment, but I think Barber has a bit of a crush… could’ve used more critique I guess? All’s Susan Sontag…

[Mentai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Antonin Artaud first used the phrase 'body without organs' in his radio play 'To have Done With The Judgement of God' (1947). It is a figure that Deleuze and Guattari later take up and develop with much influence. I wanted to better understand Artaud's relationship with the idea of the body as it appeared in his own writings, radio recordings and art works. Barber covers many of Artaud's key pieces of work and his relationships with other artists at the time both in and out of the Surrealist movement. The section on drawings and paintings is quite riveting, perhaps because the examples are so readily at hand. The final section on 'the screaming body' (which I was very much looking forward to) seemed rushed and jumps around and back and forth between sentences but not in a creative or deliberately performative way. What does come through, however, is Artaud's uncompromising approach to art, language, voice, body and living and Barber is able to show this in his description of Artaud's work.